Complete Works of Bram Stoker (488 page)

Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell

The tortures of that inward hell!

But first, on earth as vampire sent,

Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:

Then ghastly haunt thy native place,

And suck the blood of all thy race;

There from thy daughter, sister, wife,

At midnight drain the stream of life;

Yet loathe the banquet which perforce

Must feed thy livid living corse:

Thy victims ere they yet expire

Shall know the demon for their sire,

As cursing thee, thou cursing them,

Thy flowers are withered on the stem.

But one that for thy crime must fall,

The youngest, most beloved of all,

Shall bless thee with a father’s name -

That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!

Yet must thou end thy task, and mark

Her cheek’s last tinge, her eye’s last spark,

And the last glassy glance must view

Which freezes o’er its lifeless blue;

Then with unhallowed hand shalt tear

The tresses of her yellow hair,

Of which in life a lock when shorn

Affection’s fondest pledge was worn,

But now is borne away by thee,

Memorial of thine agony!

Wet with thine own best blood shall drip

Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;

Then stalking to thy sullen grave,

Go - and with Gouls and Afrits rave;

Till these in horror shrink away

From spectre more accursed than they!

‘How name ye yon lone Caloyer?

His features I have scanned before

In mine own land: ‘tis many a year,

Since, dashing by the lonely shore,

I saw him urge as fleet a steed

As ever served a horseman’s need.

But once I saw that face, yet then

It was so marked with inward pain,

I could not pass it by again;

It breathes the same dark spirit now,

As death were stamped upon his brow.

‘‘Tis twice three years at summer tide

Since first among our freres he came;

And here it soothes him to abide

For some dark deed he will not name.

But never at our vesper prayer,

Nor e’er before confession chair

Kneels he, nor recks he when arise

Incense or anthem to the skies,

But broods within his cell alone,

His faith and race alike unknown.

The sea from Paynim land he crost,

And here ascended from the coast;

Yet seems he not of Othman race,

But only Christian in his face:

I’d judge him some stray renegade,

Repentant of the change he made,

Save that he shuns our holy shrine,

Nor tastes the sacred bread and wine.

Great largess to these walls he brought,

And thus our abbot’s favour bought;

But were I prior, not a day

Should brook such stranger’s further stay,

Or pent within our penance cell

Should doom him there for aye to dwell.

Much in his visions mutters he

Of maiden whelmed beneath the sea;

Of sabres clashing, foemen flying,

Wrongs avenged, and Moslem dying.

On cliff he hath been known to stand,

And rave as to some bloody hand

Fresh severed from its parent limb,

Invisible to all but him,

Which beckons onward to his grave,

And lures to leap into the wave.’

Dark and unearthly is the scowl

That glares beneath his dusky cowl:

The flash of that dilating eye

Reveals too much of times gone by;

Though varying, indistinct its hue,

Oft will his glance the gazer rue,

For in it lurks that nameless spell,

Which speaks, itself unspeakable,

A spirit yet unquelled and high,

That claims and keeps ascendency;

And like the bird whose pinions quake,

But cannot fly the gazing snake,

Will others quail beneath his look,

Nor ‘scape the glance they scarce can brook.

From him the half-affrighted friar

When met alone would fain retire,

As if that eye and bitter smile

Transferred to others fear and guile:

Not oft to smile descendeth he,

And when he doth ‘tis sad to see

That he but mocks at misery.

How that pale lip will curl and quiver!

Then fix once more as if for ever;

As if his sorrow or disdain

Forbade him e’er to smile again.

Well were it so - such ghastly mirth

From joyaunce ne’er derived its birth.

But sadder still it were to trace

What once were feelings in that face:

Time hath not yet the features fixed,

But brighter traits with evil mixed;

And there are hues not always faded,

Which speak a mind not all degraded

Even by the crimes through which it waded:

The common crowd but see the gloom

Of wayward deeds, and fitting doom;

The close observer can espy

A noble soul, and lineage high:

Alas! though both bestowed in vain,

Which grief could change, and guilt could stain,

It was no vulgar tenement

To which such lofty gifts were lent,

And still with little less than dread

On such the sight is riveted.

The roofless cot, decayed and rent,

Will scarce delay the passer-by;

The tower by war or tempest bent,

While yet may frown one battlement,

Demands and daunts the stranger’s eye;

Each ivied arch, and pillar lone,

Pleads haughtily for glories gone!

‘His floating robe around him folding,

Slow sweeps he through the columned aisle;

With dread beheld, with gloom beholding

The rites that sanctify the pile.

But when the anthem shakes the choir,

And kneel the monks, his steps retire;

By yonder lone and wavering torch

His aspect glares within the porch;

There will he pause till all is done -

And hear the prayer, but utter none.

See - by the half-illumined wall

His hood fly back, his dark hair fall,

That pale brow wildly wreathing round,

As if the Gorgon there had bound

The sablest of the serpent-braid

That o’er her fearful forehead strayed:

For he declines the convent oath

And leaves those locks unhallowed growth,

But wears our garb in all beside;

And, not from piety but pride,

Gives wealth to walls that never heard

Of his one holy vow nor word.

Lo! - mark ye, as the harmony

Peals louder praises to the sky,

That livid cheek, that stony air

Of mixed defiance and despair!

Saint Francis, keep him from the shrine!

Else may we dread the wrath divine

Made manifest by awful sign.

If ever evil angel bore

The form of mortal, such he wore:

By all my hope of sins forgiven,

Such looks are not of earth nor heaven!’

To love the softest hearts are prone,

But such can ne’er be all his own;

Too timid in his woes to share,

Too meek to meet, or brave despair;

And sterner hearts alone may feel

The wound that time can never heal.

The rugged metal of the mine,

Must burn before its surface shine,

But plunged within the furnace-flame,

It bends and melts - though still the same;

Then tempered to thy want, or will,

‘Twill serve thee to defend or kill;

A breast-plate for thine hour of need,

Or blade to bid thy foeman bleed;

But if a dagger’s form it bear,

Let those who shape its edge, beware!

Thus passion’s fire, and woman’s art,

Can turn and tame the sterner heart;

From these its form and tone are ta’en,

And what they make it, must remain,

But break - before it bend again.

If solitude succeed to grief,

Release from pain is slight relief;

The vacant bosom’s wilderness

Might thank the pang that made it less.

We loathe what none are left to share:

Even bliss - ‘twere woe alone to bear;

The heart once left thus desolate

Must fly at last for ease - to hate.

It is as if the dead could feel

The icy worm around them steal,

And shudder, as the reptiles creep

To revel o’er their rotting sleep,

Without the power to scare away

The cold consumers of their clay I

It is as if the desert-bird,

Whose beak unlocks her bosom’s stream

To still her famished nestlings’ scream,

Nor mourns a life to them transferred,

Should rend her rash devoted breast,

And find them flown her empty nest.

The keenest pangs the wretched find

Are rapture to the dreary void,

The leafless desert of the mind,

The waste of feelings unemployed.

Who would be doomed to gaze upon

A sky without a cloud or sun?

Less hideous far the tempest’s roar

Than ne’er to brave the billows more -

Thrown, when the war of winds is o’er,

A lonely wreck on fortune’s shore,

‘Mid sullen calm, and silent bay,

Unseen to drop by dull decay; -

Better to sink beneath the shock

Than moulder piecemeal on the rock!

‘Father! thy days have passed in peace,

‘Mid counted beads, and countless prayer;

To bid the sins of others cease

Thyself without a crime or care,

Save transient ills that all must bear,

Has been thy lot from youth to age;

And thou wilt bless thee from the rage

Of passions fierce and uncontrolled,

Such as thy penitents unfold,

Whose secret sins and sorrows rest

Within thy pure and pitying breast.

My days, though few, have passed below

In much of joy, but more of woe;

Yet still in hours of love or strife,

I’ve ‘scaped the weariness of life:

Now leagued with friends, now girt by foes,

I loathed the languor of repose.

Now nothing left to love or hate,

No more with hope or pride elate,

I’d rather be the thing that crawls

Most noxious o’er a dungeon’s walls,

Than pass my dull, unvarying days,

Condemned to meditate and gaze.

Yet, lurks a wish within my breast

For rest - but not to feel ‘tis rest

Soon shall my fate that wish fulfil;

And I shall sleep without the dream

Of what I was, and would be still,

Dark as to thee my deeds may seem:

My memory now is but the tomb

Of joys long dead; my hope, their doom:

Though better to have died with those

Than bear a life of lingering woes.

My spirit shrunk not to sustain

The searching throes of ceaseless pain;

Nor sought the self-accorded grave

Of ancient fool and modern knave:

Yet death I have not feared to meet;

And the field it had been sweet,

Had danger wooed me on to move

The slave of glory, not of love.

I’ve braved it - not for honour’s boast;

I smile at laurels won or lost;

To such let others carve their way,

For high renown, or hireling pay:

But place again before my eyes

Aught that I deem a worthy prize

The maid I love, the man I hate,

And I will hunt the steps of fate,

To save or slay, as these require,

Through rending steel, and rolling fire:

Nor needest thou doubt this speech from one

Who would but do ~ what he hath done.

Death is but what the haughty brave,

The weak must bear, the wretch must crave;

Then let life go to him who gave:

I have not quailed to danger’s brow

When high and happy - need I now?

‘I loved her, Friar! nay, adored -

But these are words that all can use -

I proved it more in deed than word;

There’s blood upon that dinted sword,

A stain its steel can never lose:

‘Twas shed for her, who died for me,

It warmed the heart of one abhorred:

Nay, start not - no - nor bend thy knee,

Nor midst my sins such act record;

Thou wilt absolve me from the deed,

For he was hostile to thy creed!

The very name of Nazarene

Was wormwood to his Paynim spleen.

Ungrateful fool! since but for brands

Well wielded in some hardy hands,

And wounds by Galileans given -

The surest pass to Turkish heaven

For him his Houris still might wait

Impatient at the Prophet’s gate.

I loved her - love will find its way

Through paths where wolves would fear to prey;

And if it dares enough, ‘twere hard

If passion met not some reward -

No matter how, or where, or why,

I did not vainly seek, nor sigh:

Yet sometimes, with remorse, in vain

I wish she had not loved again.

She died - I dare not tell thee how;

But look - ‘tis written on my brow!

There read of Cain the curse and crime,

In characters unworn by time:

Still, ere thou dost condemn me, pause;

Not mine the act, though I the cause.

Yet did he but what I had done

Had she been false to more than one.

Faithless to him, he gave the blow;

But true to me, I laid him low:

Howe’er deserved her doom might be,

Her treachery was truth to me;

To me she gave her heart, that all

Which tyranny can ne’er enthral;

And I, alas! too late to save!

Yet all I then could give, I gave,